REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
BY SATELLITE TO THE NATIONAL GOVERNORS' ASSOCIATION

11:20 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you very much,
Governor Thompson, for your kind words and for all your good work as
chairman of the NGA over the past year. And thank you also for your
work on reform, especially on reforming welfare, not only in the bold
plan you have developed in Wisconsin, but also as a leader on behalf
of the NGA on Capitol Hill.

And to Governor Miller, let me add my congratulations to
you as you take on the responsibility of leading the NGA. It's one
of the best jobs I ever had and I know you'll enjoy it, as well.

I regret very much that I can't be with all of you for
this meeting. I had especially looked forward to being with my good
friend and my fellow Democrat, Governor Pedro Rossello, in Puerto
Rico and I hope I can see you there before too long. But I'm glad
you're there and I'm glad you're having a good meeting.

This is the fourth year I have spoken to the NGA as
President. And more than ever before, I believe that we are poised
together to make real, bipartisan progress, and that our nation's
governors have a critical role to play. I want to thank all of you
for the work you have done so far to grow your economies, to help
your people be better educated, to reform welfare and fight crime and
preserve the environment and move people forward.

We have to think a lot about that now. We all know that
just four years from now we will enter that long awaited and very
much discussed 21st century. You know as well as any group of
Americans that there are tremendous forces of economic and social
change remaking our country. I believe that on balance this is a
positive and hopeful time, an age of enormous possibility, a chance
for us to build a country and a world for our children that is
stronger and safer and more full of opportunity than any that has
existed before. I believe we can do that if we meet these new
challenges with our most enduring values. We have to offer
opportunity to all. We must demand responsibility from all. And we
must work hard to come together across all our diversity as a great
American community.

We'll have to meet these challenges not be edicts from
Washington, but by working together at all levels, by cutting red
tape and working with the private sector, by setting national goals
for ourselves, but challenging states and localities to find the best
way to meet those goals.

Four years ago when I sought the presidency, our nation
was drifting with uncertain steps toward this new century.
Unemployment was nearly eight percent, job growth was very slow, the
deficit was at an all-time high. After 12 years as a governor, I
vowed to do what chief executives in every state house in America
must do -- put in place a comprehensive strategy for economic growth
and follow a path of fiscal responsibility. We cut the deficit,
expanded trade, invested in our people and technology and the future.

The results are in. Our economy has now created over 10
million new jobs, 3.7 million Americans have become new home owners.
Today, we learned again that inflation continues to moderate. Real
hourly wages have begun to climb for the first time in a decade. And
we have surpassed our goal of cutting the deficit in half.

Just this morning, we're releasing the mid-session
review of the budget. Four years ago, the deficit was $290 billion
and headed upward. Today, we are projecting it will be $117 billion
this year. We've cut the deficit by 60 percent in four years,
bringing it to it lowest level in dollar terms in 15 years. As a
share of our economy, it's now at its smallest level since 1981, the
smallest percentage of the economy since 1974. We've got a lot more
to do. I am determined to finish the job and balance the budget in a
responsible way, and at the same time do more to give all Americans
the education and training they need to succeed in this new economy.

But the fact is our economy is now the soundest it's
been in a generation. Unlike the expansion of the 1980s, we can also
be pleased that this growth is being felt in all regions of our
country. America is growing, and your states are helping it to grow.
We're also making real and bipartisan progress in other areas, as
well. We've put in place an anticrime strategy that was tough and
smart, putting 100,000 police on the street, toughening penalties,
taking guns off the street by banning 19 deadly assault weapons and
through the Brady law. Now, not a single hunter has lost a gun due
to these bills, but 60,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers have been
denied guns.

We're encouraging communities to pull together to give
their young people the values and the discipline they need. That's
why we've been working to give communities the ability to impose
stronger curfews, enforce truancy laws and require things like school
uniforms.

These strategies are being tried in communities all
across our country. And all across our country the crime rate is
coming down for four years in a row. We must now bring this same
focus to bear on the rising tide of youth crimes -- in gangs and
drugs. I ask you to work with our administration to tackle this
challenge, as well. Although the crime rate is going down, in too
many areas in our country the juvenile crime rate is going up. But
we see in the areas where it's going down that there are strategies
that work there, too.

If you look at the areas where we've moved forward in
the economy, in dealing with the crime problem, we've done it not by
clinging to old arrangements or discarded philosophies or political
partisan divisions -- but by moving forward together, developing new
approaches, taking the best ideas from all sides, putting our values
of opportunity, responsibility and community to work.

Now, as all of you know very well, none of our
challenges cries out for these approaches more than welfare. All
Americans, without regard to party, know that our welfare system is
broken, that it teaches the wrong values, rewards the wrong choices,
hurts those it was meant to help. We also know that no one wants to
change the current system in a good way more than people who are
trapped in it.

Since the time when I served as co-chair of the NGA's
welfare task force -- about a decade ago now -- I have been committed
to ending welfare as we know it. I worked with many of you for years
to fashion new solutions. Today, after long years of effort, I
believe we are poised for a real breakthrough in welfare reform.
Real welfare reform requires work, imposes time limits, cracks down
on deadbeat parents by enforcing child support, provides child care.

Now, you haven't waited for Congress to act and we've
worked with you to change the face of welfare. We've cut through red
tape and worked with you to set up 67 welfare reform experiments in
40 states, with more to come. We've granted more than twice as many
waivers as the previous two administrations combined. And, now, 75
percent of all welfare recipients are already under new rules. The
New York Times called this a "quiet revolution in welfare."

Well, I am proud that there are 1.3 million fewer people
on welfare now than the day I took office, and that child support
collections are up 40 percent. But there's more to do. As you know,
the State of Wisconsin has submitted a bold plan to reform welfare.
We're working closely with Governor Thompson's staff, and I am
committed, as I've said before, to getting this done.

I'd just like to emphasize the things about this
Wisconsin plan which are compelling to me -- the idea that people
should be required immediately to be ready to go to work, but that in
return, they would have health care and child care guaranteed, and
that the welfare money could be used to pay income supplements or
wage supplements to private employers to put these people to work,
and that if there is no private employment, these folks would be
given community service jobs.

That's what we ought to be doing everywhere. If we can
create these jobs, we ought to require people to take them. I know
every governor would agree with me that for all the good that's come
from these waivers, however, we can do a lot more once we pass
comprehensive national welfare reform. If we pass national welfare
reform, we can do an even better job of collecting child support
across state lines. And if we pass national welfare reform, we can
eliminate this waiver process altogether.

For too long, the welfare issue has been marred by
partisanship, it's been mired by gridlock. But in recent weeks up
here, all this seems to be changing. I think we've now reached a
real turning point, a breakthrough for welfare reform. The new
leadership of the Senate, along with the leadership of the House of
Representatives, now indicated that they want to move forward with
bipartisan welfare reform and are dropping their insistence that
welfare be linked to the block granting of Medicaid. They've said
that they want to work to pass legislation I can sign rather than
sending me legislation they know that I would reject.

As you know, Congress sent me a welfare reform bill last
year that fell short of my principles as well as those expressed by
the NGA in your February resolution. After my veto and your
unanimous resolution, I am pleased that the Congressional leadership
has made several significant improvements that have made this a much
better bill. They've added $4 billion in child care, included a $1
billion work performance bonus to reward states for moving people
from welfare to work. They removed the spending cap on food stamps
so that states don't come up short in tough times. Their original
bill made cuts in structural changes that were tough on children -- a
school lunch block grant, a 25 percent cut in SSI for disabled
children, cuts in foster care. The current bill drops all these
provisions.

Congress has taken long strides in the right direction.
Now as we approach the goal line, we do have a chance to make history
and make this bill even better. We can give all our people a chance
to move from welfare to work, to transform our broken welfare system
once and for all.

So I hope that Congress will continue to improve the
bill along the lines that you and I have long advocated and along the
lines of the strong bipartisan bills introduced by Senators John
Breaux and John Chafee and Representatives John Tanner and Mike
Castle -- another former colleague of ours. We must not let this
opportunity slip from our grasp as it has too many times before.
Let's put politics aside. Let's give the American people the best
possible welfare reform bill. And let's do it before the August
Congressional recess.

I am determined that this bill -- that this will be the
year that we finally transform welfare across America. If Congress
doesn't act, we still have to continue to act, to make responsibility
a way of life and not an option. Today I am taking the steps that I
can take as President to advance the central premise of welfare
reform, one that is embodied in all the proposed welfare bills: that
anyone who can work must do so. We'll say to welfare recipients,
within two years you will be expected to go to work and earn a
paycheck, not draw a welfare check.

Here is how we will do that. I am directing the
Department of Health and Human Services to require everyone who takes
part in the jobs program to sign a personal responsibility contract
and commit to going to work within two years. States can then take
away the benefits if they fail to live up to that commitment.

Today 28 states already impose work requirements and
time limits, everyone of them under welfare waivers granted by our
administration. I believe all 50 states should follow that lead.
This action will ensure that that happens even before welfare reform
legislation passes. Of course, this will take effect only if
Congress fails to enact welfare reform legislation. I far prefer a
bill passed by Congress, and I know you do, too. So let's agree:
One way or another we will make work and responsibility the law of
the land, but we want a good welfare reform bill.

Ten years ago at an NGA meeting in Hilton Head, South
Carolina, I heard testimony from a woman from Little Rock, a woman
who had moved from welfare to work through our state's work program.
She told us, the best thing about work is not the check. The best
thing is when my boy goes to school and they ask him, what does your
mamma do for a living, he can give an answer.

Well, today, 10 years later, that lady has a job. And
she's raised three children. One has a job, and two are in school.
By her undying effort and her unbreakable spirit she shows us that we
can make a difference, that this cycle of welfare can be broken, that
welfare can be a second chance, not a way of life.

So let me say in closing that we can meet all our
challenges if we'll work in this way, and if we'll follow the example
of the NGA -- be bipartisan, cooperative, look for results, not
abstract rhetoric, not be ashamed to learn from each other and take
our best ideas from each other, and putting our values to work.
That's how we can reform welfare and meet our other challenges. If
we do that, this country will enter the 21st century stronger and
more vibrant than ever before, with the American Dream alive for all
our people.